It's that time of the month again Linux gamers! The new GOL survey for November is now available, so please make sure to fill it in if you have the time.
The results will be published in the next couple of weeks now that they're being published in the same month. There have been a few minor aesthetic changes since Google Forms has been updated (sorry about the yellow).
On another note, I will be taking a less active role in the surveys from now on. A few of you may have noticed by now that I'm not the best person to do this, but I'm glad to see how far this has come and how many people see it as something valuable to the Linux gaming community.
You can find the link for the new survey here, and please share with other Linux gamers if you can.
The results will be published in the next couple of weeks now that they're being published in the same month. There have been a few minor aesthetic changes since Google Forms has been updated (sorry about the yellow).
On another note, I will be taking a less active role in the surveys from now on. A few of you may have noticed by now that I'm not the best person to do this, but I'm glad to see how far this has come and how many people see it as something valuable to the Linux gaming community.
You can find the link for the new survey here, and please share with other Linux gamers if you can.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
Under Steam Machines, I missed a point like:
"I'm waiting until the platform gets more mature. (Vulkan, more AAA-Titles, etc...)"
Btw, this is something most reviews totally miss.
It's not like the Steam Machines are "released" like a console.
They are a moving target and the best is yet to come.
Still, most influential news sites provide mostly negative reviews
on the status quo and miss out how Valve is working on the whole
environment, including developer tools (profiling, debugging),
encouraging the graphics companies to provide better drivers,
pushing Vulkan and so forth...
Yet, I almost all comments on those influential websites tell you
in unison that the Steam Machines will fail because they're utter crap
and you don't get AAA-games.
Sadly, it seems Valve's PR-department is totally failing when it comes
to the SteamOS/Steam Machines. And THIS is worrisome to me.
Oh yeah, wrong place to complain about this. Sorry. :)
Filled in. I bought more games than I realized last month, and I've hardly played any of them.
I just realized that I forgot to check a box for Feral's store in the "where did you buy from" question. Bah.
I have no idea what that entails in practical terms, or how to fix it... This is why I'm no good with this stuff!
Not a huge deal we can do, unless someone feels up to designing an in-house survey or one based on an existing FOSS one.
I'm curious what percentage of Linux users are affected by this. I assume that Linux desktop users mostly play on stereo headphones, but as SteamOS creeps into peoples' living rooms, this will become a bigger issue when Linux games are more frequently played on home theater systems.
Alien Isolation, Borderlands 2 and TPS, all of Valve's games except CS:GO (only quadrophonic and 5.1, no 7.1), all of Virtual Programming's EON-wrapped ports, and many others are stereo-only ports that are supported in surround sound on all other platforms.
We wouldn't put up with these games only running at 25% video resolution on Linux, why should we accept losing 75% of our audio channels? Alien Isolation is a very audio-centric game, and being stuck in stereo is totally unacceptable. Is it okay that the regularly-maintained Linux/SteamOS version of Team Fortress 2 sounds worse than the 8-year-old XBox360 version? Right now, linux gaming offers a very poor value for me, since I have a high-end audio system (which cost nearly 20x more than the display I game on).
7.1 Audio works in Serious Sam 3 and The Talos Principle, but is curiously missing from Shadow Warrior, even though they all appear to use the same engine and have the same publisher.
Also, where would be the best place to maintain a list of the audio status of Linux games?
Last edited by Starbelly on 4 November 2015 at 7:30 am UTC
Anyway, I do believe that the steam hardware is not perfect at all, but I sincerely hope/assume that valve will improve everything possible via software updates in the very near future. such a "dynamic" thing like a steambox simply can not be released as all-in-one or as embedded/optimized like older consoles, like the playstation or the xbox.
And just to mention that: I got the xbox 1, 360 and one as a gift from friends + exclusive games like halo, I really can make a statement for sure: the xbox series are not perfect at all, there are so many issues that I used to play with these just to finish campaigns in the given games, and that's it. The 1 and the 360 were even further given to friends of mine simply because I don't want/need them into my living room. Not to mention that I am not willing to pay for the xbox live network, just to be able to play multiplayer games! that idea sounds so much stupid to me, but microsoft seems to make lots of money with that. so I am not going online with that, no multiplayer, except for local multiplayer games with multiple controllers.
another absolutely annoying thing is that I can not play 1 games on the 360 or the xbox one - that is a somewhat complete fail, even microsoft trying to sell that new emulator software for the 360 and 1 as something revolutionary and new, which will make that possible at least for the xbox one.
But hey, capitalism works, people buy sh*t.
Last edited by miro on 4 November 2015 at 7:40 am UTC