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Latest Comments by CatKiller
Red Planet Farming is a new free game about feeding colonists
30 May 2020 at 1:56 pm UTC

I've been playing this with my little one. He loves the setting and the setup, and is delighted when the crops harvest themselves.

Historically-accurate WWII adventure Attentat 1942 looking at Linux builds
30 May 2020 at 1:46 pm UTC Likes: 1

So, looking into it a bit more, as the documentation Liam linked to says, Unity uses platform libraries... but not on Linux. It doesn't use platform libraries in Linux even for the encodings that Unity supports: they wrote their own software decoder for VP8 and Vorbis and use that exclusively. That seems like duplicated effort for a suboptimal result to me, but they don't seem to have revisited it in four years, so I guess it's not a priority for them.

Interestingly, even on Windows, Intel had to write their own thing to grab a video stream from Unity so that it could be hardware accelerated.

Historically-accurate WWII adventure Attentat 1942 looking at Linux builds
29 May 2020 at 9:22 am UTC

Quoting: Liam DaweYes, it's specific to the Unity video player. I see it quite often when testing games for developers. The Unity docs make it very clear what they work with on Linux, as I linked.
Yeah, not doubting the accuracy of your reporting, just thinking that it's something that Unity could fix.

Historically-accurate WWII adventure Attentat 1942 looking at Linux builds
29 May 2020 at 9:10 am UTC

QuoteIf you're using Unity, for Linux and video codecs you need to use either webm / vp8 or ogv (info here) otherwise it's black screens and freezing as I've seen too many times in Unity games.

Is this a Unity problem? I thought the issue with games was that they weren't using platform codecs, but the Unity documentation there implies they do, and playing h.264 files on Linux hasn't really been a problem for quite a long time - unless your distro takes a free-software-only stance, which you'd already have needed to work around to install games.

Civilization VI - New Frontier Pass adds Linux support
29 May 2020 at 8:25 am UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: BlackBloodRumHappy to see this update landed within a timely manner.

It's not fixed fixed yet, though. There's still no cross-platform multiplayer. They've coincidentally prioritised the part that involves their customers giving them more money.

Steam Cloud Gaming confirmed with Steam Cloud Play
28 May 2020 at 1:03 pm UTC Likes: 7

Quoting: Nevertheless
Quoting: drlambHowever unlikely I'd die if Google (Stadia) and Valve formed a partnership.

Horrible idea! :O

Google getting bored of Stadia and Valve taking the infrastructure, and stable of Linux-native games, off their hands at a knock-down price to make available through Steam wouldn't be a terrible outcome, though.

Stadia gets Elder Scrolls Online on June 16, 1440p in web and more
27 May 2020 at 11:52 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: LinuxwarperIt's meaningless to hope for Google to encourage devs to release locally on Linux when they aren't even providing that opportunity to even Windows users.

In the time before Stadia developers would make their games for Windows and take on the costs of supporting them on Windows, and a very small number with the skills to do so would also make their games for Linux and take on the costs of supporting them on Linux.

Stadia won't, by itself, encourage game developers to release a standalone version of any game, for Windows or Linux; quite the opposite, Google will pay developers not to release a standalone version if they think it will help their goal of growing Stadia as a platform.

But what it does do is force developers to learn how to make their games work on Linux with Vulkan - since that's necessary for a game to work on Stadia - and Google will provide resources to help them do that. What the developers do with that knowledge and the product they've created after that is down to the developers. Many are going to shy away from the (real or perceived) costs of supporting actual Linux versions on actual customers' hardware, but they'll all have learned how to make games without Windows and without DirectX, which has been a barrier in the past.

Some developers are going to say, "just use the Stadia version," just like some developers would say, "just use Wine." They want an easy life. Customers that aren't OK with that will miss out, and customers that are OK with that will be able to play games that aren't available natively. Just like if they were using Wine.

Whether a move to streaming is good or bad for gaming as a whole in the long run, it's too early to say. It opens up gaming to people whose Internet is better than their hardware, which might increase the size of the market so that more people can make more games. Geforce Now doesn't tie purchasers to one provider, but it does tie game developers to Windows; Stadia is the other way round, and Google's reputation for dropping services does hurt them. There are things like anti-cheat and enormous worlds that are easier to do "in the cloud" than locally. But there is less (real or perceived) ownership with streaming than local installs. It could shake out as good, bad, or neutral over all.

Personally, I'm more interested in a streaming service from Valve than anything that exists now. They have a better reputation for longevity than Google and they have a long-term investment in desktop Linux as a gaming platform. But it doesn't exist yet, except as speculation.

Stadia gets Elder Scrolls Online on June 16, 1440p in web and more
27 May 2020 at 8:16 pm UTC

Quoting: LinuxwarperEDIT: Wait Stadia doesn't support local play? It's strictly streaming?! I thought it did as a way to break into the market..

A very early test that used Assassin's Creed gave participants a normal copy of Assassin's Creed as a reward for taking part. You might be thinking of that. Stadia itself is strictly streaming.

Humble Cities: Skylines Bundle is up for some easy city building
27 May 2020 at 10:48 am UTC

Quoting: LinasNot a builder-gamer myself, but I am curious to try it out. Is it any good without the DLC's?

I had the base game and... After Dark and the free bits.

My impression from my playthrough was that it was a glorious city builder and a terrible, terrible simulation. The traffic is a fudge, and the population explosions that you get from actually using the rewards from passing population milestones trigger inescapable death waves. Last time I checked they had no intention of fixing that, so I haven't played since.

There's enjoyment to be had, but they may well punish you for it.

Beyond Blue gets a release date, Linux looks to be later
27 May 2020 at 10:33 am UTC Likes: 8

I am interested in this, but this statement is not promising:

QuoteWhen speaking to the developer E-Line Media about the Linux version they stated, "The production team is working out a plan that will launch Linux as soon as we are able.".

Two weeks from release and they don't yet have a plan for releasing on Linux.

Really they should have had Linux builds going throughout the development process, to more easily find Windows bugs if nothing else. This sounds quite a lot like they're going to wait a while after release (because release time is hectic for everyone) and then discover that it's toooo haaaard and throw their hands up in the air. As we've seen too many developers do in the past.

I hope I'm wrong.