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Quoting: P4R4D0XHow does a pirate archive his files?
He TAAAARRRRs them!

This one's brilliant :D

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Quoting: GuestLook behind you!! A three-headed monkey!!!

Great Monkey Island reference! Guybrush wasn't joking... :D

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What's a pirate's favorite piano key?

The high C

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Pirates are self-aware because they think, therefore they arrrrrre.

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Look behind you!! A three-headed monkey!!!

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How does a pirate archive his files?
He TAAAARRRRs them!

Also... Don't be a pirate! Go Open Source!

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How much does it cost a pirate to get a piercing?


A buck an ear!

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Where do pirates supply their alcohol storage?

In RUMania! :S: :D

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Damn, that got me. I thought that was someone hacking my PC! lol

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I love this update

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Sorry folks all gone now.

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Quoting: Half-Shot

Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: scaineBottom line - it's amazing what Icculus does, but porting a game as an after thought is NOT easy and will never have the same quality as a game developed natively. Even Ryan Gordon isn't that good.

It's not a question of how good he is, he is certainly capable. The question is support costs, developers like Tripwire (Killing Floor) would have paid him to port it, not to support it. So once a developer thinks it's good enough Ryan will get his money and then they would part ways.

I don't think he charges amazingly high that gearbox could take a loss on it though, isn't it just the case of sending him the code and getting a game back? I mean there is bug testing, QA and more but thats the basic gist.

No idea what he charges, but he certainly does support the games. However, for long, I have no idea, or even if he's actually paid for providing that support. I assume so, but since Killing Floor has been out for Linux for over a year and it still has the same issues, it's anyone's guess.

In fact, taking a look - https://bugzilla.icculus.org/describecomponents.cgi, while anyone can file a bug report, it doesn't look like Ryan ever responds. And certainly, looking at Killing Floor, the texture bugs were reported over a year ago, but the bug's never had an update.

So, "best effort" might be putting it optimistically.

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Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: scaineBottom line - it's amazing what Icculus does, but porting a game as an after thought is NOT easy and will never have the same quality as a game developed natively. Even Ryan Gordon isn't that good.

It's not a question of how good he is, he is certainly capable. The question is support costs, developers like Tripwire (Killing Floor) would have paid him to port it, not to support it. So once a developer thinks it's good enough Ryan will get his money and then they would part ways.

I don't think he charges amazingly high that gearbox could take a loss on it though, isn't it just the case of sending him the code and getting a game back? I mean there is bug testing, QA and more but thats the basic gist.

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Quoting: Radegast

QuoteI wouldn't get your hopes up too much...

Hehe, Gearbox could use this as their company motto

Made my day. It's a dishardening fact that this is the truth.

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Quoting: scaineBottom line - it's amazing what Icculus does, but porting a game as an after thought is NOT easy and will never have the same quality as a game developed natively. Even Ryan Gordon isn't that good.

It's not a question of how good he is, he is certainly capable. The question is support costs, developers like Tripwire (Killing Floor) would have paid him to port it, not to support it. So once a developer thinks it's good enough Ryan will get his money and then they would part ways.

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Quoting: entropy

Quoting: manny

Quoting: entropyWasn't Gabe Newell saying recently that it turned out to be easy to convince publishers to support Linux? Gearbox obviously disagrees.

Engines my friend, engines.

Unreal engine3 doesn't have linux support out of the box. So porting takes more efforts and time.

I expect we'll get more support with UE4 games. I expect chances will be higher once they start using UE4 for games, (maybe a future borderlands3).

If Icculus as a single developer can port UE3 games, a big company like Gearbox should be able too without "wasting" too many resources.

Apart from that, I agree. Having engines supporting Linux as a target out-of-the-box might help significantly. Same goes for the other major game engines that have announced Linux support.

I am in awe of what Icculus does, but I've yet to play a single one UE3 game that didn't have horrible, often game-breaking bugs.

Examples :

Killing Floor - missing textures on all maps, West London is nearly unplayable as a result. I can see the invisible monsters. But I can't see through some scopes...

Sanctum 2 - Textures missing (minor), collision issues (player and monsters falling through the world) and many, many random crashes. This one is still in beta, but it's been like that for weeks without any updates.

Dungeon Defenders - Lots of random crashes, weird mouse sensitivity, poorer performance than what you'd expect.

As for his other non-UE ports, such as Psychonauts or Frozen Synapse, there are other smaller issues. Mouse tracking issues. Gamepad issues. Resolution issues.

Bottom line - it's amazing what Icculus does, but porting a game as an after thought is NOT easy and will never have the same quality as a game developed natively. Even Ryan Gordon isn't that good.

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To clarify. DRM is not about security. Security means protecting the user from various threats. DRM means "protecting" some external entities from the user. Or to put it more correctly - taking away control over the system and software from the user (in various degrees). Note the key difference. Security is important, as long as user can control how it's handled. If control is taken away, it's not about security anymore.

That's exactly why DRM should never be trusted and should always be seen as a malware - because trust is a mutual relation. Here is a very good video, which summarizes all these points:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=XgFbqSYdNK4

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And yet Desura does have Descent for Linux, which is strange:
http://www.desura.com/games/descent-1-2

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Quoting: alexThunderSounds like you're butthurt, or why else would bring that unrelated stuff up? :P

Ah, butthurt, the most irritatingly unproductive slur on the internet that only exists to try and shut down debate without the need to provide any valid reasons to back the assertion up.

Sorry, I don't want to derail the thread on a completely separate point, but that word really has no place in a proper discussion as far as I am concerned.

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Just wait for GOG to finally roll out Linux support for all these dosbox-wrapped classics! I really hope to be able to play most of them out of the box (w/o configuration tweaks). It should be this way on Steam as well, instead we're seeing dosbox titles released as Windows only (like Descent or classic Tomb Raider). :-/

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I would love a Strife beta key. I am a big fan of all of the moba games (League of Legends, Dota, and Smite.) I think I would love the new system to get rid of negative behavior as the gold system is simiar to smite. Please give me a beta key.

-Kyle

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Yup, DOSBox title (you can get it on GOG too). I love the sequel from 1999, to me it is one of best games ever created. It even was (is?) available on desktop Linux (and Android) thanks to fan-made project Stracciatella. Playing it with Wine was much easier though :)

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Quoting: XBONEWell unfortunately strictly speaking the same technology that is used for DRM can be applied
to prevent modifications to the system and vice versa. If you can prevent modifications to the system
then you can prevent cheating and also malware.

When discussing about DRM often I get the feeling we talk about different things. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, i.e., someone is managing in some way your right to use the software.

When someone says "it doesn't annoy me, so it's not DRM". It's changing the meaning to "something that annoys the user". Annoying the user has never been a goal for DRM, whether it annoys or not depends on the DRM system and the user tolerance.

DRM isn't meant to prevent breaches either, that would be another thing with another name, but it's mixed in to make DRM more appealing to users.

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Quoting: manny

Quoting: entropyWasn't Gabe Newell saying recently that it turned out to be easy to convince publishers to support Linux? Gearbox obviously disagrees.

Engines my friend, engines.

Unreal engine3 doesn't have linux support out of the box. So porting takes more efforts and time.

I expect we'll get more support with UE4 games. I expect chances will be higher once they start using UE4 for games, (maybe a future borderlands3).

If Icculus as a single developer can port UE3 games, a big company like Gearbox should be able too without "wasting" too many resources.

Apart from that, I agree. Having engines supporting Linux as a target out-of-the-box might help significantly. Same goes for the other major game engines that have announced Linux support.

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Quoting: entropyWasn't Gabe Newell saying recently that it turned out to be easy to convince publishers to support Linux? Gearbox obviously disagrees.

Engines my friend, engines.

Unreal engine3 doesn't have linux support out of the box. So porting takes more efforts and time.

I expect we'll get more support with UE4 games. I expect chances will be higher once they start using UE4 for games, (maybe a future borderlands3).

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Wasn't Gabe Newell saying recently that it turned out to be easy to convince publishers to support Linux? Gearbox obviously disagrees.

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I'm all for boosting Linux sales (heck, I'd be willing to pay for Battle for Wesnoth on Steam, even though it's free otherwise), but 10 dollars is a little too salty for me (yes, Steam has spoiled me).

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Quoting: MetallinatusCouldn't care less about Borderlands.... I WANT WATCH_DOGS FOR LINUX!!!!!

I want Rome II (confirmed, but when?) ;) and Evolve for linux.

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Couldn't care less about Borderlands.... I WANT WATCH_DOGS FOR LINUX!!!!!

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QuoteThis is my favourite quote:
Quote
So long as we’re concerned about things like data privacy, accounting sharing and hacking, we’ll need some form of DRM
DRM prevents hacking now apparently. Silly, silly people.

Well unfortunately strictly speaking the same technology that is used for DRM can be applied
to prevent modifications to the system and vice versa. If you can prevent modifications to the system
then you can prevent cheating and also malware.

With a combination of a TPM, Intel TXT and Secure Boot you could essentially make a DRM
system that was 99% unbreakable. Even the game binary would be encrypted and you would
first have to connect to a server, verify you were running an approved kernel before it would
release the decryption key to you. Because you were running an approved kernel you would be prevented from accessing memory directly to get the decrypted code. You would have to start probing the ram
directly, so then they would start encrypting ram to the CPU, and so on.

Also this would mean that any game server you connect to could also verify if you were running an approved kernel or not and chuck you off if you were running a modified kernel for assumed cheating.
This is VAC taken to the next level.

This technology is already being used in computers, phones and servers to prevent malware.

This would not kill gaming on Linux but would prevent you running your own OS kernel
this seems worrying what they have in mind and seemed to be what they had in plan for the
xbone before everyone complained.

It is RMS's worst nightmare!

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