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A comment on DX-Ball.

Re:DX-Ball by progman32 on Saturday October 16, 2021 @02:20AM (#28885938)
DX-Ball 2 (and Jump 'n' Bump, an unrelated game) introduced me to MOD/tracker music. It indirectly led me to the demoscene, game modding, and probably accelerated my career. I've been listening to DustRaiders, Seasons, and Elemental since :) I wonder what modern games are currently inspiring the next generation of technologists? Minecraft, perhaps? Valve franchises? Valve in particular seems pretty on board with modding tools, what with the steam workshop, their welcoming attitude towards Black Mesa, etc.
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Re:DX-Ball by pjerem on Saturday October 16, 2021 @02:42AM (#28886015)
Valve is a pretty open company. However I feel they could totally and completely crush the competition by adopting a DRM-Free approach, or at least their own one and allow us to backup a « steam-free » version of the purchased games. GOG is already doing this and they are not agonizing under piracy (and anyway they sell the same games as steam).

To get back on topic, could we have the opportunity to play DX-Ball nowadays if it was full of today-standard DRMs? Well, tbh, probably yes, but only by adding a useless cracking procedure.

Nonetheless, I totally agree with you and I myself have a « DX-Ball (2) Mods » folder on my PC for the last two decades :)

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Re:DX-Ball by wingerlang on Saturday October 16, 2021 @06:08AM (#28886768)
> However I feel they could totally and completely crush the competition by adopting a DRM-Free approach

Are they not totally and completely crushing the competition already?

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Re:DX-Ball by Fnoord on Saturday October 16, 2021 @10:37AM (#28888173)
Sometimes DRM, like Denuvo, gets removed with a post-patch after it got broken because it has a performance impact and the pirated version runs better than the DRM one, while the initial purpose of the DRM (ensure no piracy right after launch) has been fulfilled. I call that pragmatic.
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Re:DX-Ball by nixroot on Saturday October 16, 2021 @04:53AM (#28886497)
Steam is pretty DRM free. Games have Steam integration which checks if your account owns the game, but they don't attempt to prevent tampering like true DRM does. If Steam were to disappear you could easily un-steam your games.

GOG also bans third party DRM software. It's great, but big publishers don't like that which is why GOG is mostly indie.

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Re:DX-Ball by Wowfunhappy on Saturday October 16, 2021 @07:54AM (#28887210)
> If Steam were to disappear you could easily un-steam your games.

Speaking as someone who actually does this (because I despise the Steam client), it’s not easy. Different games need different Steam emulators to work, and titles that seem to run initially will break in weird ways mid-game.

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Re:DX-Ball by MikusR on Saturday October 16, 2021 @05:04AM (#28886537)
This burger is mostly meat free except for the beef used to make the burger
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Re:DX-Ball by captn3m0 on Saturday October 16, 2021 @06:27AM (#28886862)
https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

While not huge, it is a pretty big list.

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Re:DX-Ball by Wowfunhappy on Saturday October 16, 2021 @08:42AM (#28887456)
It's a big list because there are a lot of games on Steam. However, the chance that any given Steam game in your library will be DRM Free is very small. I've also had cases in the past where I bought a game because it was on this list, but the list was seemingly wrong because the game had DRM.

I've actually had much better luck with the Epic Game Store, although it's seemingly not as good as it used to be.

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Re:DX-Ball by exogeny on Saturday October 16, 2021 @02:51AM (#28886054)
Similar path for me! My entry point was Epic Pinball, then the works of Future Crew, and then further into the demoscene. I was more interested in the art than the coding however, so my next deep dive was into the artscene: ANSI and BBS modding. Soon after it was to the web!

You have to be careful sometimes with nostalgia but man, that was a great time to explore.

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