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SimTower :)

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I love that Paradox supports Linux, but damn are they one of the worse offenders of DLC...

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Quoting: rea987As it is a single player game, my expectation and explanation as follows:

Thanks to stubborn and weird release cycle of the most popular GNU/Linux distro, Ubuntu, developers need to update and adapt their titles for every LTS release. When SteamOS and Steam client updates are added to this equation, some developers simply stop sopporting the games after certain LTS release. Most of the games should still work fine anyway, but in time, outdated dependencies might prevent those games to function properly or even launch. This won't be an issue for now but after half decade, you will wonder for what reason certain games do not work any longer... Does any one remember icculus' Medal of Honor Allied Assault beta port which is literally impossible to natively run on modern distros currently? That is why having "source code" matters...

I have native Metal of Honor Allied Assault running on Fedora 25 just fine right now. That said, it wasn't install and done. I used a walk through for most of it and had to manually figure out audio to get it working. If they have one good Linux person to keep the dependencies/library versions in order (packaging old versions and fixing startup scripts) it shouldn't really be an issue. Contracting that from time to time shouldn't be a problem either, as long as your contractor is good. This is to much for a lot of dev/publishers though, even on Windows after a decade many games don't work without user fixes. I remember editing the binary for Red Faction 2 with a hex editor so it would work with DirectX 9 (this game is still sold on Steam even though it won't run out of the box on anything newer than Win XP).

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Will we be getting a Linux port report for this game? I'm considering buying it but not if Unity isn't optimized well enough.

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Anyone tried Elder Scrolls Online with the newer releases?

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I strongly prefer this over the status quo, which is "we don't want the overhead of supporting Linux, so we just won't port at all". I hate that attitude so, so much, but the vast majority of developers not already porting are taking EXACTLY that stance. There is a significant minority that are stuck with only D3D-based renderer options or a custom engine making the port far from trivial, but in the modern day that's usually not the case; making a functional binary on some common version of some common distribution really is as simple as hitting "build".

We can take care of ourselves, come on, throw us a bone! We'll figure out ourselves how to make that one very distro-specific binary run elsewhere, we've gotten pretty good at that. If we run into an issue we can't work around, we'll document it a lot better than virtually any Windows user and make it a lot easier to fix, and that's all we want -- feature parity and the occasional bugfix.

I feel that taking offense to this approach will push them towards the above attitude and drastically reduce the odds of the sequel being ported.

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This game looks like it has potential to be really great, but a lot of those we currently have aren't too great, so looking forward to see how this one turns out.

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I wonder how much performance there is to having asynchronous command stream vs the old implementation of csmt. I'm guessing it would reduce latency and improve throughput if done correctly.

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Dear neophyte devs of the world,

Please make a note someplace, perhaps tattoo it on your forehead: [center]U UE =/= Lp.[/center]

Using Unity or Unreal Engine 4 does not mean that your project will automatically work on Linux at the push of a button. You will need to work in and with Linux and should account for this in your planning stage or look like ignoramuses and incompetent boobs at release time.



Yours most jaded, &ct., &ct.

Nano 'o the Bang

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: KetilDon't use SDKs to compile releases

Huh ? That doesnt make any sense... in this case an "SDK" is simply a known set of libraries. This is what every other platform does.

Simply building with "Latest compiler" against "Latest glibc/libstdc+++/whatever" is simply not a good idea.

Sorry, I meant, don't use IDEs on desktop computers to compile releases.

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Ketiluse a compile server that lets you recompile all games for a new platform each time you update the platform for a new game. Use automated tests to see if there are any regressions, and if there are none, then offering an updated version shouldn't be too hard.

That still means pushing new releases.. which with publishers often means they want to do a round of QA before they approve release. Not feasible. Plus there is only so long you can viably do this for. You simply cant expect infinite maintenance on every released game.

Having a compile server with support for multiple platforms, and automated testing reduces the burden of anything breaking with a recompile. Usually the ABI changes are worse than the API changes. At some point even offering new binary automatically tested, but announcing it unsupported could still be better than not updating it at all.

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Fortunately I'm on nVidia. Steam launches with that flag, so I'm upgrading the system now... I hope I can make it work without the compat libs.

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It is fun, got about halfway through the challenges before stopped playing, but don't remember which ones I have done any more. As for the story, it seems to need the "LC_ALL=C %command%" override.

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Quoting: eldersnake

Quoting: Dolus

Quoting: meggermancurrently the AMD FOSS drivers are sitting around 20% behind the binary nvidia drivers.

80%!? Are they really that close?

.....There are some exceptions though (looking at YOU, Deus Ex: MD).

The most recent patches have improved Deus Ex, and some work is being done on additional OGL features that should bring performance for that game.

I would say Radeonsi has very playable performance on most titles now. Just the odd game that doesn't do well and those games using compatibility profiles where the driver falls short.

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It is a quite good game, I consider to buy the DLCs as well, although I expect I won't really play multiplayer.

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Don't use IDEs to compile releases, use a compile server that lets you recompile all games for a new platform each time you update the platform for a new game. Use automated tests to see if there are any regressions, and if there are none, then offering an updated version shouldn't be too hard.

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Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: rustybroomhandleBah, it's not recognising my Logitech Driving Force GT.

It's listed in the controller descriptions file.

I saw it there, but it still doesn't work for me.

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Bought it a long time ago. Contrary to the reviews, I found it entertaining.

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I want to pick this up if it's out for Linux.

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Quoting: ShmerlWitcher 3 has improved somewhat, in sunlit areas. But it still has missing surfaces, and there are some new distortions now:
FPS is lower than before too, but I'm not using full staging patches.

Thank you Liam and Shmerl for the info. Can't wait till I can play The Witcher 3 in Wine.

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Battletech you say? Yes please! :D

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Alright. No money from me anymore to them. And we still have unbeaten openxcom! :-)

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Quoting: KimyrielleVictor Vran isn't male because the story demands the lead character to be male. He's male because that's what his creators wanted him to be.

The story may not demand it, but writing a story without knowing your main character's gender (and sexual preferences where romance is concerned) is a far more complex task than writing for a single perspective. While it can be achieved reasonably well if you plan for it (e.g. Dragon Age), I can understand a studio not wanting to deal with the hassle of making every character interaction dependent on so many variables (does the NPC react differently to different genders? can this NPC be romanced by any gender? can your localization framework account for multiple possible genders in every sentence?). There's also the additional visual work of designing/animating an additional character model, which I presume can be a strain on very small studios. None of the foregoing is meant to defend male protagonists in particular, but I think it's an understandable choice to make a single, preset main character.

There's also simple artistic vision or personal preference involved in choosing what that preset is, which makes this an interesting problem that changes based on scale. If an individual studio feels like making their lead character male, why not? (And the same could apply to any work of fiction.) It's when you look at the industry as a whole that the statistical weight of that choice can become bothersome for some people. As far as I'm concerned, because I wouldn't blame a particular studio for picking either gender for their lead, it doesn't make sense to condemn the industry for it either, or to discriminate games based on it. But I seem to be an odd case in that I've never felt a need to relate to characters in fiction and I'm largely unconcerned by the gender, race, etc. of premade characters. Or maybe it's that I can empathize with anything presented as a character. Hm...

Anyway, I'm not arguing your preferences, just sharing my point of view. If you're tired of playing male characters in general, it makes perfect sense to avoid any given game where they're the only option.

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I wish it were in the Earthsiege universe, but it still looks pretty great. Unless the reviews are bad I'll be picking this up on GOG.

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Quoting: Xpander

Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: GuestHaemimont Games are the developers of the Tropico series and Victor Vran.
I’m afraid I won’t enjoy it much if it is similar to Paradox games or Tropico 5.

I skipped on Victor Vran because I am not too eager to play games that force me to play a male character, at least not unless premade female characters become just as normal.

Sorry but what the hell? There are games where you need gender lock because of the story, Victor Vran is pretty much one of those. Ohh noo why do i have to play as female character in Tomb Raider? ...

thats just seriously stupid if you ask me. Why does the gender in games matter at all. If its designed this way its how you play it, if it has a choice to choose, then you choose what you want to play.

Victor Vran isn't male because the story demands the lead character to be male. He's male because that's what his creators wanted him to be. It's hilarious that some people still think that 95% of all video game characters are male for no other reason than because the "story demands it". Give me Victor Vran's script and a pencil and I substitute his character with an equally believable female in less than 10 minutes. There is -zero- reason for this character to be gender-locked, except that most studios are still mentally stuck in the early 90s when girls didn't play video games.

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As Liam said in his Arma Cold War article , we need older titles to enrich the catalogue on our platform.
These games are not my cup of tea but I am glad we got them.

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I'll probably buy it. But I'll probably suck at it like a vacuum cleaner.

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Quoting: GuestYou are right in that the ABI unstable nature of Linux makes it difficult to support well.

The Linux as a kernel has never break ABI. The problem is always other dependencies. It is not Linux fault. So the solution is not to "fix" Linux but to "fix" development for Linux as a platform so the developers would do the right thing by default without even thinking about it.

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Quoting: Guest

Spoiler, click me

You are right in that the ABI unstable nature of Linux makes it difficult to support well. However, it is not impossible, but it does require knowledge and skills that your average developer will not have unless they are already very familiar with the platform.

Steam's runtime was a good attempt to alleviate this, however it creates problems of its own. We used the steam-runtime SDK at VP simply because it gave a nice consistent set of libraries to build against. However, it quickly became a problem that they were too old, and the toolchain used to build against them (gcc 4.5) was also getting too old.

Valve did work on a newer steam-runtime, but it was only usable from inside a chroot. This is no good when you are using an IDE or some other application which wants to call those tools - you either have to run said IDE/app inside the chroot (which can be a dependancy nightmare) or live with a relatively slow invocation of the chroot enviroment for every file compiled.

Yes I know this is where the fanboys start screaming "use makefiles!" but this not what game devs are used to on other platforms, and quite frankly, they are cumbersome.

I did actually start to assemble a custom "SDK" for VP's Linux stuff, based around GCC 4.8 (which was still fairly current at the time).. but other things stopped me getting it finished off. Building your own toolchain with crosstool-ng or the likes is certainly not what your average dev will be used to dealing with!

edit: I should also say that expecting a developer to recompile the game when there's ABI breakage is not an acceptable solution. You really cannot expect a a developer to support something forever, and "just release the source code" is not a viable solution. More work needs to be put into ABI stability on Linux, for it's own good.

Am I reading this right? VP as in Virtual Programming?

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Hello!! I am one of the two developers behind "Don't Touch The Zombies".
I ran into this forum and on behalf of the team, we are glad to announce that "Don't Touch The Zombies" was released yesterday on Steam ... Finally!! :)

Don't Touch The Zombies!! steam store page

The idea is to make this game grow with all your comments, actually, we think the random maps generator would be a great idea.
We appreciate if you rate the game on the steam and share with us your ideas in order to improve "Don't Touch The Zombies".

Thanks and regards.

Gabriel
Tlakali Game Studio

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If Paradox is involved I will buy it. Thats good enough for me.

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