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Open Source doesn't work

Before you misunderstand me: I'm a Linux user and love open source software (OSS)! I always try to use OSS if there is one available. But speaking from personal experience the idea behind open source doesn't really work. Hear me out. Open source is based on the premise that everybody can contribute and this way the software gets better. The more people do it the better it gets. Well, I have 2 cases for you. The first one is Ansible . I've made a small patch in one of the plugins (hashi_vault) to make the plugin more flexible. I've created a pull request (PR) back in August 2019. At that time the patch had no conflicts with the master branch. But it was never merged. Now, over 8 months later the patch still isn't merged and has conflicts, because the code changed so much since then. So instead of quickly accepting a good patch - which would help not only me, but probably quite a few others - it was left and forgotten. I find this rather sad. It shows the go
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Finish Him! Mortal Kombat 11 Reveal

Okay, so I'm writing this shortly after the reveal, but the livestream is still going on, so there might be some stuff I don't know about. The reveal was... AWESOME. I had goosebumps, I was shaking and I had tears of joy all at the same time. I love this series and have been playing since MKII. Since I got to know this series with the second entry, I already got a bigger selection of characters, than the people playing since the first game. This also means that I got to choose my favorite character from a bigger roster. And of course it had to be Baraka ! I still know all of his moves by heart (back, back, back, low punch being my most loved). And that finisher. OH. MY. GOD. Ripping of a guys (or girls) face. Then his skull. Then... yummy ! The return of Skarlet is great. Her moves were pretty fun and maybe the bloodiest of them all. Geras , the "new guy" looks to me like a cross between Tremor and Jax, maybe with some Egyptian style mixed in. No? Well
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Making a game for the PlayStation 2

Actually, not really for the PS2 - not natively at least. Rather making a game for YaBasic which can be played on the PS2. I started my geek life when I was 11 years old and got my first computer (486). A few years later I found some games written in QBasic on a gaming magazine's CD. That was the first time I came in contact with programming. I didn't understand much back then, because I wasn't taught before and I didn't speak any English (it's my 3rd language...) so I was just trying to figure out how the games worked by modifying stuff. These games were simple text adventures, where you had to make choices and the game would progress that way. There were no commands like "go left" or "pick up". The game presented you all the options and you had to input the number of the option you chose. And instead of "if-else" there were GOTOs everywhere. This was how I made my first game, a multiple-choice quiz with 10 questions. Since I didn
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RE: "Hacking" the PS2 - Game development

Happy 2019 everbody! This is a follow-up to my previous post:  "Hacking" the PS2 This whole thing started basically when I discovered that there is a possibility to write your own programs for the PS2. I didn't have a PS2 back in the day (I started collecting consoles around 2011) so I just found out recently. Finding out how YaBasic worked and "reverse engineering" the checksum in the source code proved to be so entertaining that I basically lost interest in making a game after that. During the holidays I had a lot of time and to make something productive I decided to take it up again and this time actually make a game. I also wanted to "streamline" the development process by not having to use 3 different programs and 2 OS's to test every change in the code I make. My old process was: write the code in Vim run the Bash script (from the previous post) to add the checksum use PS2 Save Builder to make a save file use mymc to a
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Microtransactions

This topic has been discussed quite extensively, but I feel that it hasn't been nearly enough. Especially when I just learned, that one of my favorite franchises is getting the MTX (microtransaction) treatment. The game I'm talking about is Devil May Cry 5 . A single player game, with a small (co-op?) multiplayer part in it. The news broke about 2 weeks ago, when Gamespot got to test the game. I really like the Devil May Cry series, but my excitement dropped to near zero when I read the news. Since then, Angry Joe , ScreenRant and others ( GameCrate , Destructoid , etc.) also discussed it. Let me start by saying this: MTX has no place whatsoever in single player games ! In triple A titles even less! Fortunately (for now) not many single player games have MTX, but the trend is worrying. Just look at Shadow of War. Or Devil May Cry 4 for that matter. MTX has been accepted - sadly - in multiplayer games over time. And the greed of the publishers only grew. Everybo
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Building my own arcade cabinet - a photo diary

This has been in the making for 1.5 years and I'm thrilled to share it with you. But instead of writing a long post with boring details, I'll just add short comments to the pictures. Enjoy! The beginning: RasPi3 and RetroPie started for the first time. Buttons & joystick from AliExpress for $20. Neat! Testing the buttons. The first box. Version 2 of the box, much cleaner. Should be something like this, when it's finished Temporary solution: ATX power supply from an old PC. The amplifier arrived, too! Learning to solder: if your tip looks like this, you're doing something wrong. Visual concept number two: controller and speaker box. The messy insides of the controller box. A friend helped me out cutting the wood for the final controller box. That's not the final box, just another test run. This is more like it. Made from an old office desk. Button layout on paper...
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