Tell me I'm not the only one who figured this out:

Yesterday I saw this on Twitter. It was really weird how Tim derailed a discussion about business sovereignty into a discussion about racism. He's obviously more intelligent than that, so it seemed that he was playing dumb.

What made Tim's reply even weirder is that the article itself does a good job of making it clear that Tencent does not control Epic. So, there wasn't any need for Tim to derail the discussion as if he was hiding something.

Only one thing was still missing: If Tencent doesn't control Epic, what's the business model behind their acquisition? It's not a partnership, since as Epic stated, "We don't share anything with them. In fact, we compete with them." Why would Tencent give hundreds of millions of dollars to a competitor?

Well, let's see how they are competing. A quick search for "Epic Store China availability" gave this result:
"The Epic Games store is available to players in most countries in the world except for China and where prohibited by US law".

Wait a second. China is the home of Tencent, and one of the biggest gaming markets in the world. By making the Epic Store unavailable in China, Epic makes sure that none of their store exclusives can compete against Tencent's games. But why would Tencent want Epic to open a store like this, instead of simply discouraging them from opening it? Hmm...

Tencent has launched a new piece of hardware called the TGP (Tencent Games Platform) box. Acting a little like a Steam machine that runs Windows 10, the system offers Chinese gamers the chance to play popular games like League of Legends, without requiring a gaming PC to do it.

Steam. That's it. By making western games become Epic Store exclusives, Tencent eliminates the competition from Steam in the Chinese market. Plus, it gives Tencent a whole year to clone any successful western games before the Chinese audience can play it, cementing their dominance in the Chinese market.

The hundreds of millions that Tencent gave Epic are probably much more than the royalties that Epic would have gained from third party Unreal Engine games sold in China. So, helping Tencent to monopolize the Chinese market seems to be a lucrative move for Epic. 

it's PRO-COMPETITIVE and for the good of the gaming industry!!! 

Well, regional lockout isn't a new thing, it's been done forever.

It's a sure loss for Chinese customers, and for some developers (basically, the ones for which the higher profit margin doesn't cover the missing revenue from the lost Chinese customers). But it's nothing illegal, and doesn't affect western customers.

I wonder how many third party developers are actually conscious of all that, though. 

It's amazing the level of love old shooters are getting these days, even in corporate settings. 22 years ago Quake 2 was a demonstration of what a PC could do, and somehow it still is:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/quake-ii-rtx-ray-tracing-vulkan-vkray-geforce-rtx/ 

glengch throngmlnorchgnen Today at 6:27 AM
so.... does anyone remember that thing where someone put all of the id1 maps into a single bsp?
anyone got a link for it?

glengch throngmlnorchgnen Today at 6:40 AM
reasonably sure i'm not imagining it. i know one was made for beyond belief, and half-life 1

Bal Today at 6:41 AM
yes it does exist, no idea what it was called though

glengch throngmlnorchgnen Today at 6:42 AM
it's one of those things where there's no obvious search string to type into google that results in anything meaningful
also: welcome to the wierd shit that bugs me at 6.30am I guess 

I don't think it actually exists. I believe you're thinking of the "episode 1 in one bsp" map made by necros. 

Bummer, maybe that's what I was thinking of, yeah.

In any case, I imagine it would be a right faff to make - just thinking of all the targetname clashes that you'd have to fix... 

There's also map styles (base, medieval, runic) soundtracks and sky textures to conflict. 

merge all E*M1 maps into a single base map
merge all E*m2 maps into the second map
merge all E*m3 maps...

then when you get to m7 you have to find all four runes and fight chthon. that opens a pit to end.bsp which would also be merged into the same map.

note, i realize that some episodes only had 6 maps. 

I do agree that the best merger would be one where the maps are connected in a way that deviates from the order in which they appear in id1. Creating a continuity and evolution of theme would be a good idea.

So the episode 1 metal maps (e1m6, 7 & 8) would be connected to the episode 3 maps for example.

To be honest (and i'll probably regret saying this) I'm actually real tempted to bugger around with this as a little side project. I would solve the targetname hell using a little program i'd whip up that appends a unique string per map to all the target/targetname/killtarget values. 

put all the maps in the original order!

http://scar3crow.com/2016/01/quakes-original-map-order/

Some guesses there. But might be fun. 

oh interesting... yeah, merge maps based on theme.

All base maps.
Then, all brown stone maps.
Then, all green mossy stone maps.
Then, all terra cotta maps... 

back to #30869 ...

I agree that there doesn't seem to be a lot of nazi/racist/etc. stuff here, and I also don't remember it being part of #tf back in the day (but for me that was over 10 years ago and alt-right didn't really exist then.) But, maybe it's happening and I just don't notice it because it doesn't affect me?

But there is plenty of other bad behavior here. Flames, trolls, perpetual grudges, attacking outsiders, etc. 

An embellishment on that idea would be to have all the similarly themed maps in spatial proximity, (green brick zone, metal zone, city zone etc.) but the player progression can weave between themes/zones quite freely

This assumes the entire id1 world is tightly packed into a single map. 

so where can i find necros' episode 1 merger? It's not on quaddicted or his website... 

found a version in this mod: https://www.quaddicted.com/files/mods/ne_dynamic.zip 

I think this is what you were thinking of:
https://github.com/plankatron/quakemash

Lots of files there but I think the compiled map is in release/quakemash.zip? Haven't tried it. 

*takes 2mo break, pokes head in* Yall been busy! Where's the 2019 map list? 

Hi, I am working on making a websight together with a friend that is going to host a collection of all the modern FPS-es made in a "retro"-fashion out there and where to get them.

We've registered www.retropew.com but so far we have not yet hooked the content up to the address, and the project is currently WIP sitting here:

http://quakeulf.suxos.org/htmltest/retropew/

There's a platform filter in the top right and we'll include more games as we get the time. Obviously a lot of games are missing right now and also getting good promo graphics is hard, hence why it is not official yet.

What do you think? 

RetroPew is a terrible stupid awful naff name. Evocative of shit weapon sounds and that fucking youtube cuntscraping, and nothing to do with classic shooters.

Also Quake3 is not a fucking retro classic by any stretch.

BUT aside from that, it's quite a good idea. If you can be bothered to regularly update all the listings with regular news, updates, trailers, releases etc, it could be well worth it. 

I know it's pronounced "p-yoo" but you can easily pronounce it retropoo... and that is a problem 

the "pew" bit is bad. No-one says "pew pew" apart from those pretend gamer plonkers who think games still had commodore 64-esque chip sounds in the late 90s.

Also, yeah "Pewdypie" (or whatever he's called) does for the word "pew" what Hitler does for the pencil moustache, so it's two strikes really, exactly as sham says.