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Comment by IgorPartola | Hacker News Reader

Reminder that MS owns GitHub, LinkedIn, and Mojang.

>Mojang

The real danger. (almost unironically though)

I can switch OS, Office is almost obsolete with google + free stuff, their browser/software is terrible and never used, Github(yikes, well, git works..), LinkedIn(and nothing of value was lost).

So we really are at the whim of M$ when it comes to Github and Minecraft. Scary. But hey, I used to be obsessed with Nintendo games, and now people have Zelda clones so I don't need to pay games that are graded on the Nintendo Curve.

Could you name some Zelda clones?

The best ones it feels like an insult to call clones, but Tunic is a very good one that comes to mind.

Tunic is nothing like Zelda, except that both characters wear green and swing a sword. It's really good in its own way, though.

It's a lot like the 2D titles, with elements added from the 3D ones, like the targeting system, stamina meter, and controls for raising the shield (not a thing in many 2D Zeldas). Plus, of course, it also introduces its own elements and gameplay elements from other series.

There is a little more to the series at this point than the 30 years old Link to the Past.

That game is still great. Show some respect!

More seriously, Tunic also draws upon newer Zelda titles as well as games outside the series. In addition, many 2D Zelda games have come out since the time of the SNES, not even counting re-releases like the recent remake of Link's Awakening.

Tunic doesn't just evoke Zelda aesthetically as a substitute for developing its own aesthetic! It's a loving homage to a series that absolutely materially inspired the core gameplay, too.

The cynic in me wants to argue that all post-SNES 2D Zelda games are in fact remakes of LttP :) I mean that as a good thing.

I haven't had a chance to really play Tunic yet, but I just get the feeling that calling it a Zelda clone is unfairly reductive to both. If Tunic and Okami are both Zelda clones, but not clones of each other, something needs reevaulation.

Genshin Impact is basically a better version of BotW

And is also Gacha is it not?

I'll take an up front cost any day over content gating/gambling/fomo.

But the lack of PvP or other strong competitive elements makes it still fun to play free as long as you're in it for the game & story and not for the collecting and minimaxing.

It is, but you can play the 60 hour main story for free. I was surprised by how non-gatcha it was after hearing how bad it was.

fenix rising is better than botw

Not terribly recent, but Darksiders from 2010 is pretty good. Haven't seen anything else really comparable.

Not a clone, but Zelda Classic is a custom game engine with about a thousand fan games created in it.

https://hoten.cc/blog/porting-zelda-classic-to-the-web/

https://veloren.net - not exactly a clone but it's pretty awesome (and free software)

"Veloren is a multiplayer voxel RPG written in Rust. It is inspired by games such as Cube World, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft."

"Veloren is fully open-source, licensed under GPL 3. It uses original graphics, musics and other assets created by its community. Being contributor-driven, its development community and user community is one and the same: developers, players, artists and musicians come together to develop the game. "

There are no “Zelda clones” of compatible quality and intrigue.

Exactly. Nintendo spent many years developing a sequel to Breath of the Wild, when they certainly could've gone for a cheap cash grab, and instead released an extremely high quality followup to a beloved game.

Not only that, but they delayed release for a year to fix bugs and polish TotK [1]. They deliberately missed the holiday '22 window for this! No one else seems to care about their games as much as Nintendo in terms of product quality.

[1] https://www.gamingbible.com/news/tears-of-kingdom-delayed-fo...

Isnt ToTK just a BOTW DLC?

ToTK makes BotW look like like an early developer build. While the base of the map is the same, they expanded it WAY beyond anything reasonable for an expansion pack. They have an below ground map that is the same size as the rest of hyrule and it is basically done just as a bonus to the rest of the title.

The depths is just inverted version of the same overworld height map, copy-pasted enemies and reused items from BOTW. It's simply yet another collectahon with bunch of puzzle shrines with physics sandbox. Not zelda game in my book. At least it did not copy paste the same boss with different skin 3 times this time however.

The use of "just" here is classic underestimation of complexity or investment required. Technologists everywhere face this negative language from customers and other laypeople, and I expect many readers understand from first hand experience how insulting it feels. Please don't "share" that negativity with other creative arts.

> Zelda clones so I don’t don’t need to pay games that are graded on the Nintendo Curve.

Huh?

Corrected:

> Zelda clones so I don’t need to play games that are graded on the Nintendo Curve.

hospitalJail is saying there are similar games out there, and that they don't need to play games from Nintendo that are unfairly rated well just because they're from Nintendo, despite a former obsession with Nintendo.

Ah, understand now.

If we’re querying review bias it becomes inherently subjective so probably not much point in discussing it beyond that even if I disagree.

I’m unsure of anyone producing games of a quality and polish level that rivals Nintendo, but that’s subjective too.

>I’m unsure of anyone producing games of a quality and polish level that rivals Nintendo, but that’s subjective too.

like sub 20 FPS, empty worlds, 5 enemies with different skins(okay, factually there were 11 enemies, meanwhile MM had over 70 enemies), same story as the last 30 years, annoying combat mechanics, grindy crafting(food) mechanics.

But IGN said it was the greatest game of all time 10/10 and never mentioned a single issue. That is what happens when we grade on the Nintendo curve.

>Office is almost obsolete with google + free stuff

Google is also a privacy nightmare tho...

I use LibreOffice. I'm the only person I know who does, but it works great. People are incensed when I send them ods files. "You expect me to install a program on my computer to view this file?" "No, you can use any spreadsheet program." "I don't want to do that. Why don't you just use Google sheets?"

Minetest is surprisingly good it's a minecraft clone but also a sort of game engine like roblox but FOSS. It even has lots of mods, gamemodes, texturepacks, and servers to try out

> when it comes to Github

If MS did something super sketchy with Github, I suspect there would be an almost cambrian explosion of new tools to do with Github does.

It would be wise of them not to go against those that know how to build alternatives. Never under estimate the stubbornness of a programmer wronged.

Look at Richard Stallman, disliked proprietary software so much he spent his life fighting it even building large parts of an OS! Messing with Github would be like creating 100,000 Stallmans - and I don't think anyone wants that. ;)

GitHub as a tool is easily replaceable. GitHub as a platform where you can easily interact with countless projects is not. MS would have to really fuck up to negate the network effects.

LinkedIn could never be trusted anyway :)

But I think all these different divisions just act radically different within microsoft. What is absolutely certain is that the Windows team cannot be trusted, as they have shown repeatedly.

GitHub has not broken my trust in them yet. I'm sure one day it'll happen; statistically it's more likely than not. But what's the point in pre-empting it, exactly?

> But what's the point in pre-empting it, exactly?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

Yep, LinkedIn was always bad. But I don't trust GitHub or Mojang to any greater degree. They're all Microsoft, and will burn you sooner or later.

> GitHub has not broken my trust in them yet.

I abandoned GitHub as soon as MS bought it, but I think my choice was a good one. If I hadn't, then I would have felt betrayed by the copilot stuff.

to layer on top of those: half the modern developer ecosystem via VSCode.

> half the modern developer ecosystem via VSCode

Granted, there is a reason it got to that place.

It's pretty good. Otherwise it wouldn't have the userbase it has.

How that was pulled off in Electron is insane to me.

They took HTML, JS (well, TS) and CSS and sprinkled in some WASM (I think?) and you get that?

The result of essentially a "web app" is impressive, gotta give 'em that. And they started on it 12 years ago.

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